Dark Hearts, Enlightened Souls by Kay Race
What's It About?
Scotland, 1885. “WANTED — Clean intelligent girl between 11 and 13 years as a companion/maid to the daughter of an Edinburgh merchant. Must be literate. Apply in writing to ... etc.”Rose Buchan, age 12, excitedly prepares to leave home for her new position. The money she earns will be a lifesaver for her widowed mother and three little sisters. Bravely, she promises to write regularly, and enters the carriage of George Galbraith. Upon arrival at his grand Edinburgh residence, however, Rose discovers she’s a prisoner in the Gideon Club, where the city’s wealthy men pay to do unspeakable things to young girls.
Dark Hearts, Enlightened Souls by Kay Race explores the dark underbelly of Victorian Scotland and its nascent women’s suffrage movement. Part social history, part police procedural, part romance and abundant with background details, the novel offers a rare glimpse into the era’s dire conditions of women and children.
As Rose’s family anxiously await her letters that never come, Lady Louisa Moncrieff is very much involved in her charity work. After an encounter with several ragged and hungry street urchins five years before, she has established four shelters to take care of Edinburgh’s poorest and neediest children, often rescued from abuse.
A VISITOR WITH ULTERIOR MOTIVES
Louisa is also absorbed with rallies, recruitment and marches in support of women’s right to vote. Her parents have a firm belief in social justice. Her mother, Lady Emily Frances Moncrieff, is a founder of the Edinburgh Women’s Suffrage Movement and her father, Lord James Andrew Moncrieff, is a High Court judge. Unlike other families that valued sons and heirs over daughters, Louisa was afforded the same education and privileges as her male peers.
One morning in Louisa’s office at one of her children’s homes, she receives a German visitor, Herr Wittenberg. He asks her to take in his nieces, three young orphans, until he finds suitable housing for them while he is in the city on business. Louisa’s dog, Harvey, a large greyhound/deerhound lurcher that is always by her side, doesn’t like the man, and she quickly becomes suspicious of him, too.
Wittenberg’s answers to her questions are evasive, and the frightened girls don’t appear to be sisters at all. Over lunch that day, Louisa expresses her concerns to her “young man,” Dr. Charles Frobisher. He advises her to contact the police, then secretly follows Wittenberg and sees him enter the Gideon Club. As police take over the investigation of the suspected child prostitution operation, Louisa’s involvement draws the angry attention of George Galbraith, Gideon Club proprietor. Not even Harvey will be able to protect her from Galbraith’s nefarious plans.
The book races to a satisfying conclusion, but leaves one of its most pressing issues for last: Will Louisa find time in her life for personal happiness and accept Charles’ long-standing offer of marriage?
THE FULL EDINBURGH EXPERIENCE
Race describes historic Edinburgh with a native scholar’s eye. As an undergraduate, she researched the life and work of Emma Stirling, a philanthropist who founded a refuge for the city’s vulnerable children in 1877. In her book’s afterword, Race details the late 1800s’ “Defloration Mania,” or the lust for virgin prostitutes; Stirling’s discovery of a trade in young German girls; and Scottish Reformation leader John Knox’s tirade against women in power.
Before retiring, Race was a psychotherapist for Britain’s National Health Service. She has also worked to heighten awareness of domestic abuse and gender bias in Scottish government policies. Dark Hearts, Enlightened Souls is the third novel in Race’s Dark Edinburgh Series. Book 1, Trapped in the Dark Decade, is about a woman’s struggle to escape an abusive husband. Book 2, Dark Past, Secret Present, details a scandal of clergy abuse.
You can purchase Dark Hearts, Enlightened Souls and the rest of the series here.
